Authenticity in business sustainability

PurposeThis paper critiques existing approaches to business sustainability and recommends a new course of action. This paper focuses the critique on sustainable business practices (SBP) and gaining sustainable competitive advantage (SCA), as they have increasingly been the focus of strategy and management scholars.Design/methodology/approachThe relative progress in the strategy and management domains is reviewed with regard to incorporation of concepts such as sustainability, corporate social responsibility and stakeholder theory. The defense industry is explored as a paradigmatic case of inauthentic sustainability.FindingsFindings reveal that existing constructs lack authentic sustainability, largely on account of the tendency of these discourses to privilege select stakeholders in the developed world. Strategic management research needs to evolve further to accommodate a broader, systemic and global focus that will yield authenticity in business sustainability. Mutual benefit for all stakeholders necessitates a paradigm shift in our thinking from competition to collaboration and creation.Practical implicationsWhen SBP and SCA get applied to certain industries, such as defense, they prop up a form of inauthentic sustainability. All global stakeholders must be included in sustainability frameworks, and some businesses, by their very definition, should not be sustained.Social implicationsMutual benefit for all stakeholders necessitates a paradigm shift in people’s thinking from competition to collaboration and creation. This paper suggests that Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) can provide the requisite direction for future strategy scholarship so as to overcome existing limitations with SPB and SCA.Originality/valueThis paper suggests that BOS can provide the requisite direction for future strategy scholarship so as to overcome existing limitations with SPB and SCA.